The New Yorker Radio Hour - Bob Woodward on His Trump Tapes

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Bob Woodward is not one to editorialize. But, during his interviews with Donald Trump at the time of the COVID-19 crisis, Woodward found himself shouting at the President—explaining how to make a decision and trying to browbeat him into listening to public-health experts. Woodward has released audio recordings of some of their interviews in a new audiobook called “The Trump Tapes,” which documents details of Trump’s state of mind, and also of Woodward’s process and craft. “I could call him anytime, [and] he would call me,” Woodward tells David Remnick. His wife, Elsa Walsh, “used to joke [that] there’s three of us in the marriage.” And, in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s accident, the staff writer Louisa Thomas talks with David Remnick about an uncomfortable truth: football’s danger to players is part of its singular popularity.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For over a half a century, Bob Woodward has been gaining access to and reporting on people in the highest positions of power in the United States. And when it comes to presidents, he has gone toe-to-toe with nearly everyone since Richard Nixon. And if you look at Nixon, sorry, he failed. Right? Why? Because of you? No, no, no, that's not the... I mean, there's...

You helped. Woodward is every inch the reporter, not at all someone inclined to editorialize. But in his many hours of conversation with Donald Trump, from before the election in 2016, through the initial fallout of the COVID crisis, Woodward came to see Trump as not just a disruptor, but a real danger to the nation.

He's now released the audio recordings of some of those conversations in a new book called The Trump Tapes. We hear Donald Trump's state of mind in his own peculiar words, but we also gain a greater appreciation for Woodward's process and his craft. Bob, you are now out with something very unusual. You've been publishing books, obviously, since Watergate about the American presidency. Now you're publishing with the Trump tapes an edited version of your raw materials, your tapes with Donald Trump. And I have to ask you, after your first book about Trump in 2018, which was hardly a flattering portrait, why do you think he went on talking to you incessantly?

Well, this goes into the state of his mind. It is a confidence that he can sell. himself to anybody. I'm sure you remember this about George Cannon, the famous father of the containment theory and practice of containing the Soviet Union. And Cannon had this phrase, the treacherous, treacherous curtain of deference, that you go into the Oval Office and people just melt and you have Trump's dominant personality with this treacherous deference that takes place and he thought he was in control. But, okay, but you were not intimidated by the Oval Office.

Why would you be? You can't be. It was, again, one of these things Trump just decided he's going to do. Lindsay Graham told him, well, said he won't put words in your. mouth. And I don't put words in his mouth. So there I am in the Oval Office before the Resolute Desk. He has his props, pictures of he and Kim Jong-ung. And we start talking about 2016, why he won. And this is something historians are going to be exploring for 100 years. And my analysis was, it's Barbara Tuckman's notion of the dying of the old order, that the old order was dying in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

And Trump got that intuitively, not intellectually. And he just jumped in his chair when I said, yes, and I'm going to do it again. Of course, he did not. You know, I remember watching you early on television one morning, and I was a big loudmouth about Trump from the start, and maybe it's because I'm here in New York and years of listening and watching Trump, and I've been wrong about things in the past, but I thought this guy was pernicious and worse right from the start, and I was watching you on Fox, and it was true that you were saying, and many people were not, that he should be taken.

taken seriously and that he might win. But I didn't hear you being hypercritical of him like many in the media were back then. And I thought to myself, God, Woodward is really smart because Woodward wants to get to this story. Were you playing him? No, of course not. Look, if you've listened to these tapes, I was combative with him all the time and say, hey, wait a minute, what are you doing? But I really know it's the Graham Green line about don't despise your enemies. They have a case and you need to understand the case. And in the case of Trump or anyone, it's who are they? And you want to come reasonably with a blank slate.

Okay, I'm here to listen. I've always thought of Trump in many ways as the most transparent president of our lifetime, that what you see on television as not dissimilar from what you get in private. By talking to him privately, and you had endless conversations with him, in person, on the phone, by surprise, and on and on and on, what did you learn in private that you were not getting in public? That's an important question in this process, which was strange. I could call him anytime. He would call me. Elsa, my wife and I, she used to joke, there are three of us in the marriage, and the phone would ring. And is it one of our daughters? Is it a friend? Is it a robocall? Or is it Donald Trump? And it would often be. Donald Trump. Here's the variable. I could ask follow-up questions. It wasn't a press conference or a stop at the

helicopter on the White House lawn, which all presidents, Trump indeed included control the environment. And no one can say, hey, oh, wait a minute, you didn't answer the question. So I would have sessions with him, like after the first impeachment, I literally was the interrogator. Why did you do this? How can you do this? Look at that. Or most importantly, for me, the experts like Dr. Fauci telling me, this Trump's not listening about the virus, well, what's he not listening to? These are the 15 things he needs to do. do that they could not talk to him about because he would not pay attention. There are times in the interviews where you tell Trump what to do, talk to Bill Gates about the pandemic response or go ask Ivanka if he should apologize for the call to the Ukrainian

leadership that led to the first impeachment. Maybe talk about those moments. And before you do, let's play one or two. Who's the person you trust most in the world? That's an interesting question. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I don't want to get into it because I have so many people. I have great family member. I trust my family member.

Ask them if you should apologize. I think if I apologized, I think if I apologized for something that I did nothing wrong. It's a question of, how can I apologize for making a decent statement, a very, very appropriate statement? You got another one here about Bill Gates. Let's hear that. There are all kinds of wise. people out there. Have you been able to talk to Bill Gates? He called me a little while ago. What do you think of Bill Gates?

You know, I do not know him. I just know he spent billions of dollars on fighting these diseases, and he's very informed. He still gets a lot of money from the U.S. government to fight. Yes, he does, but he puts up a lot of his own money, too. and you know about when somebody puts up money, it means they care. Somebody like that you need to listen to, and you can say, okay, I'll weigh that. I will talk to all the business people. I'll talk to the Fauci's.

I'll talk to the experts. And then out comes the, you know, you never make a perfect decision. Right. but out comes the best decision. I have to ask right away, Bob, the notion that you were talking to a guy in his 70s, who's the president of the United States, and you're telling him about the rudiments of how you make a decision.

You talk to a lot of experts and come to conclusions. I mean, were you thinking to yourself, I'm talking to an idiot? If I may, look, I think what he did is president is worse than criminal. And I think it's provable on many levels in many ways. But I think it's a mistake to call him or think of him as an idiot because he navigated something what 46 people have in the history of this country.

He got to the presidency. You want to criticize that certainly. and examine it. But I think in 2016 in my business, and I put myself at the top of the list, we were not inquisitive enough about Trump because we love the show and the pyrotechnics. I think the foreign policy issue

that's concentrated upon the most here and is perhaps the most revealing is North Korea and his relationship with Kim Jong-un And here he is joking with Kim Jong-ung about the Little Rocket nickname. Let's listen. We've always gotten along great. I said, did you ever hear of the song Rocket Man? He said, no, no, no.

Did you ever hear of Elton John? No, no. I said, I did you a great favor. I called you Rocket Man. Yes, you called me Little Rocket Man. You know, I listened to him. He knew. Oh, he knew that.

He didn't like Little Rocket Man. Rocket Man was okay. but he did like. Now, is this someone taking the presidency seriously? Well, I mean, it's, you know, they're joke moments, but this was not a joking issue. And if we play some of the other tapes of Trump telling me about that relationship, it might be useful. Is this all designed to drive Kim to the negotiating table? No, no. It was designed for whatever reason.

and it was designed. Who knows? Instinctively. Let's talk instinct, okay, because it's really about, you don't know what's going to happen, but it was very rough rhetoric. The roughest.

Again, part of the tragedy. Who knows? Who knows? You know, why are you doing this? What's your purpose? What's the strategy? What's the plan? Who knows?

It's instinct. But the CIA says about Kim Jong-known. You know, they do all this analysis and reporting that he's cunning, crafty, but ultimately stupid. I disagree. But I'm sure they tell you that. I hope you write that, and I hope you write my answer.

I disagree. He's cunning, he's crafty, and he's very smart, and he's very tough. Why does the CIA say that? Because they don't know, okay? Because they don't know. They have no idea. I'm the only one that knows. I'm the only one he deals with.

He won't deal with anybody else. What do you make of that? I make of this is the danger of Trump. Only I know. I'm the only one who knows. I've written books and reporting in the Washington Post about 10 presidents. I've never heard of one say or imply to anyone that they're the only one that knows. In fact, maybe some of them at times have thought that, but they realize, again, you need to open the door to other information, thoughts, and conclusions.

You and I both work at the Washington Post when Ben Bradley was the editor. Ben, can you imagine Ben running? Only I know. I mean, he would come and call you into his office. What do you know? What's going on? Pull up a chair literally next to your computer. Very hungry for information.

Why? Because he knew that was the path, as he used to always say, the truth emerges slowly, sometimes. Slowly. What do you think? You were really shouting on him. I was. To get in the word edgewise. You're shouting, though.

It's really loud. It's okay. It's okay. You want to get more information from him? Like this, I agree. Not having him what he needs to do. You're kind of stunted when you were telling you what to do. Yeah.

Same. I kept, I kept. Okay. But we're in a different world. Oh, gosh, really. So for those who couldn't quite make that out, you're saying that you're in a different world now with a guy like Trump, while Elsa, Walsh, your wife and herself, an extremely good reporter, is telling you that you were shouting in him and that I can't imagine, that's not your temperament so far as I know.

No, that's right. But this was an interview, April 5th. I had talked to Fauci and all the experts, and they told him. me as I was saying that, you know, he won't listen. Well, what won't he listen to? And I had 15 things and I literally went through them with Trump. You need to coordinate internationally. Henry Kissinger just written an op-ed piece about that. Of course, Trump didn't. Oh, what Kissinger say? You were talking to the President of the United States in real time, constantly during this crisis, this extended crisis.

And I wonder, obviously you nailed down the date when he knew about this and the seriousness of it, but how would you characterize the person you were talking with his level of curiosity, engagement, seriousness? I mean, how would you characterize those conversations overall? What he's serious about is himself,

again to go to July of 2020. This is the point the virus. It killed 140,000 people in this country. And talking to Trump on the phone, recording it. All of these are recorded with his permission. And I said, it's pretty bad. And he said, what are you talking about? What's bad?

And I said, well, the virus. He said, oh, we've got it under control. under control. I mean, I'm almost jumping through the phone. It's nothing under control. And he said, I mean, this is, listen to it. Hear him in his own. Well, I'll have a plan in 104 days.

And he said, well, if I put it out now what no one will remember. And then I did the calculation, 104 days. was election day. He's thinking about the election. Bob, you've been at this for over 50 years, this activity of reporting, and you've certainly reached the age of self-reflection. I wonder if you can boil it down, what you think that have been your central achievements, and what did you miss or get wrong? Well, I got a lot of things wrong. What Carl Bernstein and I tried to do, in a piece we wrote for the Post, which is the new introduction to all the president's men, is draw the connection between Nixon and Trump. And they are so many. It is really alarming.

And what was Watergate? It was an effort to destroy the process of nominating and electing the president. What is it that Trump has done? It is, in the same way, destructive of the process of January 6th, which is in the Constitution and in the Electoral Act laid out in great detail. This is how we decide who is president. The vice president, who's the president of the Senate, convenes. the House and the Senate, and they count the electoral votes. And here was an equivalent realization by Trump and others that this is the soft spot.

You know, if somehow we can get Pence to not count the votes or adjourn the meeting, just like Nixon, if he can just destroy the process, the day, opposition party had in 1972 to nominate a strong candidate. I mean, it's devastating what Nixon did to destroy that process, and it is devastating what Trump did trying to destroy that process on January 6th. Finally, Bob, I want to ask an institutional question. The Washington Post, I think at this moment, after some really strong years, is struggling. It's losing subscribers by the hundreds of thousands.

It's hemorrhaging talent. Its business leader, Fred Ryan, has failed to do for the Post what the leadership of the Times has done. And he also seems not to like journalism very much. The editor, Sally Busby, is confiding to reporters that she might be headed for the exits after just a year in place. you care about the Post a lot and you probably remain, you definitely remain its most vivid figure. If you could tell Jeff Bezos anything about what to do about the Washington Post of the current moment, what would you say? Oh, boy. I've known Bezos for more than 20 years and I communicate with him and it's close.

clear to me he's aware that there's trouble. And I think he's in, I know he's in a listening mode about what people think, what those troubles are, where they come from. And I know him well enough, he's not an impulsive person, but can be very thorough. there is an awareness that he has and other levels in and outside the post that we've, that some repair work needs to be done. What that is and how and who is responsible. I'm on the sidelines.

I'm in the old geezer class. And there's nothing worse than the people who've been there before coming along kind of saying, oh, well, when I was there, it was different. So I am confident that, and again, this is an interesting comparison to Trump. There are on these tapes discussions of Trump about Bezos, because Trump's telling me, oh, Bezos directs what you do, and I say, no, no, he stays, keeps hands off. Oh, he said, I don't believe that. And made it clear if he owned the Washington Post,

he would have his hands around the throats of everyone to do what he wants. Just to be clear, you're talking to Bezos? I'm just not going to say who I've talked to or how I do it. It's just like the reporting. There are no Bezos tapes. Bob Woodward, thanks so much. Thank you. Bob Woodward's new book,

It's His 22nd, is called The Trump Tapes. The audiobook is available now, and the book is out in paperback this month. President Trump, how are you? How are you? Lindsay said, give you a call. I just spoke to a couple of people. I said, I just came back from two speeches,

and I said, I got to call the man. What's going on? You're doing okay? This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Louise Thomas covers sports for the New Yorker, everything from the World Cup in the Olympics to the NFL and tennis and the Britney Griner saga, even the World Chess Championship.

We got together last week to talk about the year ahead in sports, but just the night before we spoke, DeMar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills suffered cardiac arrest after a tackle, and football fans all over America watched in horror. Louisa, you have an unusually intimate view of pro football, far more than most sports writers. Your husband was an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, John O'Shell. He's also a mathematician, and he left the game some years back. He decided he'd had enough. What do you make of what happened to Dumaar Hamlin, to say nothing of the countless head injuries that we've seen, and pro football seeming inability to guard itself and its players against the innate violence of the game?

I mean, you said it yourself, it is innate in the game. It's intrinsic. Violence is part of football. It's part of why it's so exciting, to be honest. It's part of why people are so drawn to it because there are real stakes in those violent clashes. You know, when someone that you love, when a family member is on the field, yeah, football can feel different. I mean, you end a game and you take note of the score, but you also take note. of whether anyone was injured and seriously injured. You once told me that to play a football game is to be in a car accident every single time. Yeah, I do remember one day when John came back from a game and we were talking and suddenly he remembered his like shoulder hurt,

you know, and he'd separated joint. I mean, it was sort of an afterthought. An afterthought. It was an afterthought because, you know, players are just in pain after games. And they're also just like so high in adrenaline. But the point is they're injured all the time. And they deal with pain that we can't even imagine.

And they deal with risks that we can barely imagine. Is it a fantasy on the part of, you know, high-minded fans in the league to think that somehow you're going to make this game a hell of a lot safer than it is? Well, the game, as we know it, is a response to the incredible brutality of football. At the turn of the 20th century, players died all the time. Teddy Roosevelt summoned the various members of the Harvard and Yale and everyone to discuss what could be done about football because players were literally dying on the field. And that led to, for one, the invention of the forward pass.

So it's not true to say that we can't do anything. Something has been done before. But it's hard to imagine that kind of radical change would take place. So the pass was a way to avoid injury. To avoid death. And now you see people coming across the middle to get a pass taking their life in their own hands. Yeah. So the thing that we always come back to is that what makes the game so exciting.

The reason that football games are the most watched event in America, you know, year after year after year, is that they are live, they are dangerous, they are exciting, they are thrilling. and they are are violent. And we do ourselves a disservice to ignore that fact because that's what they are. And, you know, it's the reality that that's what people are drawn to. And players know what they're risking. I mean, it's, I don't think we should infantilize them to say that, you know, they don't really know what they're doing.

They know. But, but yeah, it's scary. I'm a little bit unnerved by this experience, just like everyone else. DeMar Hamlin's injury was a terrifying start to the year in sports. But I also want to know what else you're anticipating in 2023. We did just experience an astonishing World Cup. And soccer seemed maybe briefly to steal the show, even in this country. Do you see soccer, the other football, having a real impact in American life,

and maybe even cutting in on the NFL's popularity at some point? Oh, I think this is all, we're talking about, relative degrees here. I think soccer is absolutely going to become much bigger in the United States. I really do think that. I also think that football, and particularly the NFL, is so big. We're talking of magnitudes, greater interest. There is so much attention that the NFL can lose a lot of fans. A lot of people can turn off their TV, and it will still be the biggest thing in the United States. The U.S. women's national soccer team had a very public fight for equal pay. We also saw players speaking out about Black Lives Matter. Do you see that trend continuing with the newer players that are coming up in women's soccer? Yeah, I think they grow up with the expectation that this is part of the job, honestly, and they are not afraid. I think that the challenge will be whether or not they take it a bit for granted. They have achieved what they set out to do. The remarkable thing is that they are not. They're they have equal pay.

You know, does that mean that their job is, you know, quote unquote, done? I think that the ones who are inclined, you know, players like Mitch Purse, I think, are natural leaders in social justice issues. And they will, you know, continue to use their platform to speak out on issues that they care about. Finally, the most important issue for 2023 is LeBron James headed back to Cleveland yet again. You know what? The amazing thing about the NBA.

I said, I don't think about LeBron James that much anymore. Don't tell him. The league doesn't quite revolve around him anymore. Yeah. I mean, good on him. You know, he's 38 years old and still, you know, one of the best players in the NBA slash history, even at his current level. I got to say there's a player at Luca Donchish. And this guy, you look at him.

And the way he's playing, he's kind of like a slightly out of shape, uncle figure. he looks like he's playing basketball in flip-flops. And the other night, he had a game where he scored 60 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists, and the statistics didn't even seem to tell the story he was so dominant. He actually forced overtime by intentionally missing a free throw, and he scored this kind of improbable shot, and then he did this little shimmy-shimmy shakedowns. It was too much.

It was amazing. I mean, that guy is just fun. to watch. He reminds me kind of like a puppy dog. He's just, he just makes you smile. The player that excites me most to go see, I was lucky enough to go see the Knicks play, the Memphis Grizzlies. I hope you were, I knew you were going to say him, because he's the player who excites me the most, too. Oh, John Morrett is, the guy is insanely good, insanely good, and it makes me feel like I wish I were pulling in every Memphis Grizzly game. He's fearless. I mean, I think that a compilation of his missus.

would might be more exciting of his compilation of his made dunks. I mean, this guy just wants to jump over seven feet men. Like, it's just his thing. And he is not afraid. He's tiny. I mean, you know, not by, you know, human standards, but by NBA basketball standards. He's really small. And he can just pogo over, you know, centers.

Like, it's nothing. But sadly, sadly, sadly, the dominant team. and it kills me to say it is the Boston Celtics. And that was not, you know, people didn't really know what to expect. You know, they had a kind of rocky off-season, very rocky off-season. They came out of the, you know, the NBA finals looking kind of young and fresh, but people really didn't know what to expect, and they just burst out of the blocks. I mean, they just, with the best offense in the NBA,

and, you know, they're sort of settling down, but they have, on any given night in Jason Tatum, They have, you know, the guy who's probably the best player on the floor, and they seem to be very well coached. And, yeah, they're an incredibly exciting team. Louisa Thomas, thanks so much. Thank you. You can read Louisa Thomas on Sports at New Yorker.com. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remning.

Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Rita Green, Adam Howard, Calliola, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Ingofen in Puguele,

with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistants from Harrison Keithline, Mike Cutchman, and Meher Batia. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.